Aamber Pegasus

Is it an optical illusion, or is that board flexing?

Yeah.... it is.... in what could only be described as a "slightly worrying" way. The case is ever so slightly too narrow, but I can only assume it's always been like that.

I leave for a few weeks and Applefritter.com becomes a Mondrian.... typical

Nice to see the Aamber Pegasus on show.

The hardware was designed by Stewart J Holmes - sad to hear he passed away - I didn't know that he had.

The basic system came with 4k RAM, and later versions had 64K RAM.
There was an optional rotating switch that allowed you to select one of up to 6 language environments from 12 different eproms - there was Xtended basic, Pascal, Tiny Basic, MAD (assembler) and Forth.

I wrote the Tiny Basic interpreter for the Aamber Pegasus - in 6809 assembler.

I still have my machine -it's in working order. I also have the original SWTPC 6809 system that was used to develop and test the software for the Pegasus - also in working order. I also have much of the original hardware and software documentation.

If you need anything, let me know.

We had some real fun times at Technosys back then - e.g. to demonstrate the Tiny Basic interpreter, I invented and wrote a version of snakes where the snake grows by eating a block - it was different from versions of snake/worms that existed back then, where you simply had to avoid obstacles. The growing version is the version that you can now find on cell-phones and all-round the net. I sent it to Paul G. and got a shock 2 days later when many of the folks at Technosys (the firm that developed the Pegasus) were crowded around a Pegasus and betting real money on snakes ! To my delight, when snakes was installed on the demonstration Pegasus in the Byte Shop in down-town Auckland, people were queing to play snakes on the Pegasus and were ignoring all the much more fancy games and computers.

I have very fond memories of those hectic and very fulfilling days at Technosys, and it's great to see the Aamber Pegasus given some recognition !

I'm too the proud owner of one of these beasts! My first real computer. I first programmed, hand assembled code on 6502 micros but soon got used to the 6809. I totally dissassambled the monitor code to find out how it all worked. I wrote a program to print to a golfball selectric teletype so I could print the contents of my 12k file on tape that was the extended BASIC. I built up a board with 6116 2k ram chips to take the place of the eproms so I could load any program into the same address space. My only worry is whether the files will load the next time! I reverse engineered the 'black blob' to disable the protection scheme. If anyone has documentation about the board etc I would love to see it. Maybe we could swap notes?
I'm keen on hearing from anyone who still has one of these computers.

All the best...

I gave mine away to a an ex-pat NZer whose AIM name is "Namachari". He's living in Japan now and just recently built a Replica 1 as well. I think he's a forums member here at AF.

Ex-Parrot did indeed hand this computer on to me. I used to have one when I was a young boy (14). My next door neighbor was involved with the company before it disappeared and he gave me one of his spare machines. I have very fond memories of it. Mine used to live in an original Aamber Pegasus suitcase style enclosure.

I'm working remotely with cooldad (see above), he has kindly offer to help me fix this machine. So far I have built a new PSU for it, but the computer fails to work. I do get a strong video signal, which is always a good sign. Unfortunately it only displays a white screen.

I've also contacted Paul Carter (see above), he's one of the original software developers for the system, and he is attempting to crank up his old 6809 SWTP development system and backup the original pegasus ROMS. Hopefully then I can burn some new ROMS for this system.

Once I get it working (and I will get it working eventually), I will make a web page outlining the system.

Check out my other pages here:
http://web.mac.com/lord_philip/